


Guts

by blue_bees



Category: ''oh but that's not a fandom'' listen buddy I'M in the zombie fandom, Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), zombies - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gen, Plague, Virus, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 15:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8584315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_bees/pseuds/blue_bees
Summary: An away mission contracts a nasty bug via zombie bite, throwing the occupants of the USS Enterprise into chaos and sparking the first ever recorded zombie infestation in SPACE.





	1. Chapter 1

Doctor Leonard H. McCoy was quite frankly used to things going disastrously wrong during routine missions at this point. It was at least 3 years into a 5 year mission, and there was no pretending that anything on this damn ship ever went according to plan, even if he’d been the sort to try to delude himself in the first place. Still, he couldn’t have imagined just how wrong everything was about to go when the first redshirt was dragged, unconscious and bleeding from a ragged wound in his arm, into medbay.

McCoy snapped into medical mode instantly, sizing the patient up. “Get him onto the biobed. Nurse, we need something to stop the blood flow, now. Careful there, with his head.” He scooped an arm under the man’s shoulders, helping the two pale-looking ensigns who were practically dragging the poor man along ease him down onto the bed. Nurse Chapel handed him a dermal repair unit and he ran it along the man’s torn-up arm, slowing the spreading scarlet stain and fusing ripped tissue. He leaned forwards, inspecting the wound even as the raw edges softened and sealed. “What the hell happened to this man?” he asked, incredulous. “These almost look like tooth marks. Human, or humanoid, I’d say.”

The two ensigns glanced at each other, eyes betraying some unspoken fear. The taller of the two—Keene, Ensign Keene, McCoy seemed to remember—spoke up. “Away mission,” she told him. “They found the source of the distress signal we’ve been tracking, but we’d barely beamed down before we were attacked by… something. Some kind of humanoid savage. It bit Ensign Paskey and grabbed the other two of the security detail when they tried to help, as well as...well, here they come.” She stopped, gesturing to the door, as a couple more crew members stumbled in, assisted by a medical aide. McCoy sighed heavily. Did EVERY away mission have to end with half the security department staggering into medbay?

“All right, all right, put them on the beds too. I’ll look them over.” He turned to Ensign Keene. “I think Paskey will be alright. He’s suffering a bit of blood loss perhaps, but other than that he appears to be fairly stable.”

She flashed a grateful smile at his gruff reassurance. “Thank you, sir. And may I wash up? I…” She held out her hands, scratched and smeared with the injured man’s blood, in explanation.

He nodded. “Over there, decontam station. Or just plain old-fashioned soap and water. Knock yourself out.”

He returned to inspect the new arrivals. Aside from Paskey, there were three other red-clad crew members scratched and bitten, though they were all conscious and seemed to be in better shape than the first arrival to medbay. There was also a single blue-clad sciences woman who’d fallen and managed to break her ankle in the chaos that had ensued, but hadn’t suffered any bite wounds. He fixed them up as well as he could with an exasperated sense of resignation. At this point this sort of thing was fairly routine; the darn ground mission crews couldn’t seem to last a day without getting themselves nearly eaten by some new space monster or another. This, McCoy reflected, was why he stayed on the ship. It was safer, it seemed, to stay on a reality-warping-device powered barely airtight hull hurtling through a vacuum of nothingness than to stand on solid ground on god-knows-what-planet for five seconds. Go figure.

He went over to where Nurse Chapel was setting the science ensign’s ankle. “Patched up and sent off two of the security ensigns, and gave Keene a quick fix for a cut on her hand, but nothing serious. We might want to check out Paskey, though, he’s still unconscious.” He gestured at the ensign. “How’s her ankle? Do you think she can walk?”

Chapel shook her head. “Out of the question,” she replied. “It needs time for the fused bone to harden before she can put any weight on it. So I don’t want to see you wandering around the rec room anytime soon, all right?” She said this last bit rather sternly to the ensign in question, who gave a sheepish grin and a thumbs up.

“Well, that just means we’ll have three to take care of instead of two. I’m not a damn babysitter, you know, I’d have you out of here immediately if I could.” He tried to glare at the injured ensign, but his face softened at her expression. “Well, you just try to heal up quick there. Nurse, if you’ll come with me?’

“Absolutely,” replied Chapel, following him over to Paskey’s biobed. McCoy pointed at the unconscious man’s readings. “See anything unusual there?” he asked.

She frowned at the readout. “His blood pressure...he almost looks like he’s in shock.”

“Exactly. And he still hasn’t woken up. I thought it might’ve been blood loss at first, but now I think there might be something else wrong with our friend Paskey.”

“An infection?” she offered. “His immune response is up.”

McCoy picked up the nearest PADD and made a note. “I’d say so. Might’ve been some bug he had before, might’ve been something he picked up on the planet. Whatever it is, we should keep a close eye on him for now.”

Chapel stared long and hard at the readings on the panel. “Did any of the others show any sign of infection?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Didn’t scan them for anything specific, but I checked them out and there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with them. Besides, if they’d caught whatever nasty little bug Paskey has planetside, I’d expect to see them showing symptoms around the same time as him. I think they’re in the clear, but if Paskey’s still not doing well tomorrow we should call them down for a more in-depth examination. Something could’ve always slipped through the cracks if we weren’t looking for it in particular.”

She nodded. “I’ll do another scan on him and see if I can run some tests on his results.”

McCoy smiled and clapped her on the shoulder. “That’d be mighty good of you, nurse.”

He wandered off to examine the other wounded, who seemed dazed but otherwise fine. Paskey remained stable, and McCoy found that he was allowing himself to relax. Relax! A fine word to use while on a ship out in the uncharted reaches of the galaxy! A fine word to use when orbiting above a planet with an enigmatic distress signal piping its terrified blaring off into the depths of space! A fine word to use in the medbay of a starship that regularly sent people to its medical office broken, bruised, bleeding, and sometimes infected. If you’d asked him, he might’ve told you that relaxing was not in his vocabulary as CMO of the USS Enterprise. He’d have told you that in the darkness and bleakness of deep space, relaxing was a fatal mistake, a luxury that nobody could afford. And yet here he was.

As it turned out, it would not actually prove to be a fatal mistake, but it would get pretty damn close.

 

* * *

 

 

Ensign Keene couldn’t sleep. She’d developed an awful headache when she first got in bed for the night, hours before, and though her meds had finally kicked in the pain was quietly persisting in the space behind her eyes. Besides, the cut on her palm was burning. It wasn’t all that bad of a cut—more of a scrape, really—but the searing sensation seemed to stretch halfway up her arm. She was beginning to think that she would have to visit the medbay again tomorrow to have it looked at. She might’ve gone right then and there, but it was so late and she was so tired… and it seemed a shame to bother the night shift over something like a dinky little cut on your hand. She rolled over, eyelids heavy. It would be a shame.

She’d go in the morning.

Or maybe, she thought, it would be all better in the morning. Maybe it would just have all gone away by the time she woke up. Sometimes that sort of thing happened.

She finally fell asleep.

When Ensign Keene’s eyes opened the next morning, the pain was indeed gone. Ensign Keene felt neither the pounding of her head nor the burning of her infected hand.

Ensign Keene was no longer there to feel anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! A bit of a slow start perhaps, and none of the "graphic depictions of violence" as promised in the tags (yet), but hey! This is just chapter one out of a planned 13—things are going to get interesting quick after this.  
> And what's that I hear? Nurse Chapel isn't on the Enterprise in the AOS timeline? Well buckle up buddy, because I'm planning on including Lieutenants Riley and Leslie, too. I'm an old TOS fanboy at heart, and JJ Abrams can kindly go jump out of an airlock.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> McCoy gets up close and personal with his very first zombie as the infection begins to spread throughout the Enterprise.

The next morning McCoy was met with grim faces and grim news.

“Night shift had a rough time,” Chapel told him over breakfast, sitting across the table from him near the medbay entrance. “Whatever Paskey had, the other security guard evidently had it too. The other one lost consciousness around midnight and they both started to develop encephalitis at around the same time. They hooked them up to support systems, but they all went downhill fast and… well, they’re disconnecting them from life support this morning.” She shook her head and took a sip of coffee. “We’re going to have to examine them today, and check in on everyone who went down to the planet.”

McCoy nodded soberly. He tried not to think too hard about what the other ensign—Keene, was it?—would look like when he had to deliver the news. Space. It was a dangerous place, full of unknowns, but something like this always hammered it home. Paskey had been a pretty young kid…

He stopped. “Did you hear that?”

Chapel stopped, too. “Did I…” Another noise came from medbay—a wet sort of noise, then a thud. She frowned, uneasy. “I’ll go check. Maybe Lt. Grace fell out of bed or something.”

McCoy returned to his breakfast as she strode in.

No more than fifteen seconds later, she came rushing out, doubled over, and retched. McCoy leaped to his feet in sudden panic, grabbing her shoulder, and she looked at him with a mask of terror distorting her face. “Paskey....” she whispered, and in a heartbeat he was rushing through the biochem lab into medbay.

He wasn’t really certain what he’d been expecting, but what he saw was worse than any sick notion he could’ve possibly envisioned. Lt Grace, the blue-clad sciences woman, had indeed fallen out of bed. But that was the very least of her problems. The most of her problems seemed to lie in the way she’d been eviscerated in a fashion that turned even McCoy’s hardened medical stomach. And, of course, Ensign Paskey, standing red to the elbows over her.

He must’ve made some sort of noise, or perhaps Chapel had as she came up behind him, because Paskey turned towards them with an unnatural slowness, extending one dripping arm. He tilted his head, jaw slack, pupils tiny pinpoints in discolored eyes. “Mother of God,” McCoy rasped, feeling every muscle and nerve ending in his body tighten. “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?”

It—Paksey—scraped a step or two closer to them. “Grace,” whispered Chapel. “We’ve got to-”

“Chapel,” McCoy snapped, voice shaking, “there is NOTHING we can do for her now. Look at her! She-”

“She couldn’t run,” sobbed Chapel quietly. “She had a broken ankle, she couldn’t run away.”

“Well, we’re not going to run either, not yet. We have to figure out what’s wrong with-”

Paskey lunged at him, going from molasses slowness to an almost-normal speed so suddenly that he staggered back, reeling as it grabbed for him a second time. He stumbled and was certain that it was going to finally grab him with those filthy, dripping hands when Chapel lunged forwards and embedded a knife in its stomach with astonishing power. He hadn’t even seen her holding it until then.

“No!” he cried from some sort of residual doctor’s instinct, mind suddenly flashing to Paskey the patient instead of Paskey the monster. But Paskey barely reacted, paused for less than a fraction of a second before surging forwards again to meet them. “RUN!” yelled Chapel, dragging him to his feet, and the two of them set off madly through the biochem lab in terror.

As if on cue, the intercom chime went off in the lab as they passed it, and McCoy slowed to answer it.

“Doctor McCoy, in medbay. We’ve got a situation here, I’ve got to get out of medbay fast, so tell me what’s going on and don’t waste a damn second.” He tried to keep his voice steady and reassuring, but the low moan of Paskey approaching from the other room was seriously dampening his bedside manner. Chapel slowed too, flashing him a warning look. They had to make this fast.

“I- I- Ensign Keene-” the voice on the other end of the end shook. “She- Keene, I mean, she came in to the rec room and, uh, I think Grant is dead, she killed him, I don’t know what’s wrong with her, she bit- she bit-” it broke off into a cracked sob. McCoy felt his heart clench. Keene. That was the one who’d… but how? How had she been infected, too? Unless… her scratched up hands, her blood on them, his blood on them. Blood-to-blood contact. Bodily fluids. Saliva to blood; transmitted through, say, a bite. He heard Paskey shuffling into the doorframe and suddenly the image of the bite marks marring the security guards’ hands flashed through his head. Dammit. Oh, goddammit. They weren’t just in medbay. They were-

“Doctor McCoy?” came the voice again through the speakers, trembling. “We’re on deck 6, I need help getting Grant to medbay, and Liu too, and I can’t do it alone- Keene bit me, I-”

“NO!” shouted McCoy, heart racing. “Stay away from medbay, you hear?” He glanced at the figure shambling steadily towards him. “Don’t come down here. Don’t even leave the deck you’re on. Just…stay put.” He took a deep breath and his voice softened. “I have to go, but I promise we’ll try to get you help. McCoy out.”

“Doctor!” Chapel shrieked as Paskey’s limp form suddenly took on a burst of speed, hands closing on empty air by inches. “We’ve got to get out of here and tell somebody!”

“All right, all right, I’m coming,” he said hastily, scrambling backwards to the medbay door. He glanced back just once and his heart jumped to his throat as he saw, behind Paskey, the slowly moving form of the other security ensign and—far more horribly—the crawling, mutilated shape of Lt. Grace, face smeared with her own blood and gore as she let out a guttural groan. McCoy had seen a lot over the years, and had thought that he’d be ready for anything space had to throw at him. Still, he could barely breathe as he turned away and ran for the door.

“What do we do?” asked Nurse Chapel helplessly as they backed away from the medbay entrance, waiting for Paskey to come out any moment. “What do we do?”

McCoy thought of the three...things in the medbay, of Ensign Keene and the terrified, infected people in the deck 6 rec room, and of the two still unlocated of the security detail, likely already affected by whatever this virus was, wandering the ship somewhere. He imagined the terrified injured flocking to the medbay, imagined uncomprehending security officers grabbing the infected with no precautions to protect themselves, imagined fearful crewmembers kneeling at the side of their injured friends only to have their friends tear them to pieces, and quietly swore.

“We get the word out, call a red alert,” he responded. “And we run like hell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we meet our first harbinger of the apocalypse! McCoy is not having a good day, but hey, McCoy having a good day is a rare thing indeed.
> 
> Next week (or month, or day, depending on when I finish the next chapter): we actually talk about somebody other than McCoy and Chapel; namely, Kirk and Spock and our friends on the bridge crew.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bridge crew begins to evacuate infected areas as the Enterprise goes into lockdown.

Kirk was still mulling over yesterday’s fiasco on Solanum XII as he wandered the halls of the Enterprise. They were still in orbit over the planet; he was due to head another away mission later today. His job was to make sure that the second attempt wasn’t as much of a disaster as the first.

He replayed it in his head. They’d beamed down in response to a generic Federation distress call, originating from a shielded fort on the planet, and had begun approaching on foot when those… _things_ had come out of nowhere and attacked them. They hadn’t come from the fortress, though; they’d come out from the surrounding landscape, swarms of them. They’d battled off the first onslaught, several members of the away team suffering deep bites and scratches, and had tried retreating to the fort when the Solani natives in the fort had begun firing on them. Disruptors, right at them! It had to be a miscommunication, though Kirk couldn’t imagine why. The Solani peoples were remarkably humanoid; they must’ve understood that these were allies responding to their beacon. And yet…

Kirk jumped slightly as the red alert sounded, shaking his head to clear it. Red alert? What could possibly be going on that warranted a red alert? He ran to a wall and touched the panel.

“Kirk to bridge. What’s going on?” he asked tersely.

Uhura’s voice answered, the slightest edge of fear creeping into her words as she spoke. “Health and safety emergency, sir,” she responded. “Please get to the bridge immediately. Spock will be meeting you on your way there.”

“Spock?” Kirk frowned. “I don’t need a babysitter, I know how to get to the bridge on my own.”

“Please proceed immediately to the bridge, sir,” she repeated. “Uhura out.”

Kirk shook his head again, a little confused. A health and safety emergency that warranted a red alert? A health and safety emergency that needed him on the bridge immediately? He couldn’t imagine what this might be about, but he set off down the hall as fast as he could.

The sight that met him two corridors down stopped him in his tracks. A young woman in command gold was leaning against the wall heavily, blood running sluggishly down her arm and dripping onto the floor and the wall. She barely seemed to register his approach at first, but swung around unsteadily when he spoke.

“Are you alright?” he asked, although the answer should have been obvious. “There’s a red alert, you need to get to your station.”

She blinked blankly at him through clouded, staring eyes, hair falling into her face. The red lights of the alert made her features seem distorted somehow. He felt an eerie feeling tracing its way down his spine and swallowed hard.

“Oh, right, of course not. I’ll call medbay for you.”

He reached over to the panel on the wall, not taking his eyes off of her, and that was when she struck.

She pitched forwards at him with a throaty growl, maw open, and he felt instinct take over as he kicked her solidly in the chest, flinging her backwards. He stepped back as she steadied herself and advanced again. His heart raced. Something was wrong with her, she- What was she? He had a very unsettling feeling that he already knew, that he had seen this before. She reached an arm out for him again, and he got ready to defend again, but before he could a flash of red lit her up from behind and she crumpled.

“Captain?” The face that followed the phaser gave Kirk a sudden rush of relief.

“Spock? Thank god you-” The collapsed form on the floor in front of him stirred and he leaped back. “What the- what the hell, I thought you stunned her!”

“I did,” Spock replied, face even paler than normal. “Though previous experience shows that she will not stay that way. The only way to subdue an infected person appears to be a kill shot, but I am trying to refrain from such desperate measures at this time.” He sent another stun bolt into the rising woman, sending her crashing back down. “If you would come with me, Captain?”

Kirk didn’t have to be told twice. He edged around the woman’s bloody body, giving it as wide a berth as possible—it already seemed to be recovering from the last shot—and bolted down the hall, Spock at his side.

“You don’t suppose I could get any explanation for all this?” Kirk asked, panting, as he ran.

“The away team to Solanum XII contracted an unknown pathogen through their wounds, a fact which Doctor McCoy was not aware of until this morning. During this time the pathogen has begun to spread into an outbreak on the ship.” They ran into the turbolift, Kirk punching the button for the bridge as hard as he could. “We are about to enact a quarantine, and did not want to leave you sealed in with any infected crewmembers.”

“Well, thanks, Spock. Good to know you’re watching out for me.”

Spock gave him a sideways glance, eyebrow arching. “To put the most senior officer on this vessel in unnecessary danger would be simply foolish.”

Kirk smiled.

 

The bridge was a scene of thinly controlled chaos. Uhura was typing away furiously at her console, simultaneously talking into her headset, answering plea after desperate plea from around the ship for information or backup or safe exit routes. Another man stood over her shoulder, his own earpiece in his ear, responding to even more calls. Kirk felt cold. How many of these things were on board? How many people had been infected? People with PADDs walked past, giving and receiving terse instructions, dodging each other, saluting him as they passed. Kirk suddenly realized how crowded the bridge was. The off shift was still here, giving backup to the crew. He supposed they couldn’t exactly send them into the minefield that the rest of the ship currently was.

“Where do we need to quarantine?” he asked, walking up behind the main shipboard sensor panel where Chekov sat. He pointed at the red dots peppering the ship’s floor plan. “Are those… the infected?”

Chekov turned his head to face him, eager face written over with fear and determination. “Negative, keptin. Ve do not have ze ability to pinpoint ze… exact location of ze infected yet, ve are simply using ze distress calls zat Lt. Uhura is receiving.” He double-tapped on a section of the main saucer, zooming in. “Ve have received calls from most crew quarters, and suspect zat zere are infected on all decks up to deck nine, at least.”

“Our current plan is to seal off all means of egress—jeffries tubes, turbolift, emergency ladders—to prevent spread of the infection,” added Spock, coming up behind them. “The threat is less the fully affected than the carriers who haven’t yet succumbed. Their terrified flight is the most efficient vector for the virus’ transmission.”

“But by sealing them in, we’re effectively dooming all the poor healthy people on those decks.” The enormity of what was going on began to sink in as Kirk felt all eyes on the bridge turn to him. He’d been brought here to make that call, he realized. It was on his shoulders.

There was quiet for a moment. Kirk listened to the gentle hum of the ship beneath his feet, imagined the hundreds of heartbeats on the decks beneath his feet.

“Sometimes, Captain,” Spock said quietly, “the needs of the many…”

Outweigh the needs of the few.

Right.

Kirk turned to the bridge. “All right,” he said. “Seal off all main saucer decks completely. Uhura, do you have safety information to broadcast on shipwide frequencies?”

“Aye, sir,” she responded, beginning to patch in the main ship com. “Doctor McCoy has given us as much information as he could before beginning evacuation.”

Kirk’s stomach lurched slightly at the thought of McCoy being stuck down there. He’d been trying to think in numbers of crewmen saved and lost, not in names and faces.The one person who probably understood what was going on the most, too…

He stopped. He had an idea. But first, to get them out of there.

“Sulu?” he called. The helmsman turned smartly towards him. “Break out of orbit, head to nearest starbase. We need support, we can’t help anybody on Solanum XII if we’re dying too.”

“Aye, Captain. Pulling out now.”

“Good. Uhura, begin broadcast.” He turned and looked thoughtfully at the Vulcan standing beside him. “And Spock? I’ve got something to run by you.”

* * *

 

“This is Lt. Uhura speaking. Red alert. Red alert. All personnel on Engineering decks, please man your stations.”

McCoy looked up. “Thank god they’re finally making some sort of announcement,” he said. “It’s about damn time.”

“All main saucer decks entering lockdown,” Uhura’s voice continued. “There has been an outbreak of an unknown virus on the ship. Infected crewmembers may be gravely injured but still mobile, and will not respond when addressed. Do not approach infected crewmembers. While slow, they are dangerous and will attack you on sight. Do not attempt to help infected crewmembers. If you have been injured in an attack by an infected person, please stay where you are. Do not attempt to go to medbay for assistance.”

“As if we’d be any help right now,” McCoy told Nurse Chapel.

The intercom on the wall near them gave a warning whistle. “Doctor McCoy?” a voice asked. McCoy stared for a moment, surprised, then answered. “This is Doctor McCoy. I can’t help you, dammit, didn’t you hear the announcement?”

“I’m not calling you about that, Bones,” responded a familiar voice in exasperation. “Is Chapel still with you? Are you two armed?”

“Of course she’s still with me, Jim, I couldn’t just leave her. But… armed?” He could already feel where this conversation was going, and didn’t like it in the least. “I’m a doctor, not a security guard. Where the hell am I supposed to get weapons on such short notice? It’s not as though I make it a habit to go around packing heat!”

“I had a knife,” Nurse Chapel added quietly. “But I...lost it.”

McCoy’s mind flashed suddenly to the image of Paskey lumbering towards them, dark, sickly blood oozing from around the handle of the knife that protruded underneath his ribs. “I don’t think it would’ve been that helpful, anyways.”

There was a couple of words exchanged on the other end of the comm between Kirk and somebody else—Spock, McCoy suspected—and then Kirk returned to the comm.

“Where are you guys? Do you have your tricorders?”

“We’re barricaded into an empty science lab, so we’re safe for now. And no, we don’t have our tricorders with us, we forgot them while we were running for our damn lives!” He sighed, bringing his voice back down. “I think there’s some science tricorders around that could do in a pinch, but no medical ones. Get to the point, man, what are you planning?”

“I couldn’t just leave everybody locked in with those infected...things. We’ve gotta evacuate the healthy ones to Engineering, Bones, and I need somebody with medical knowledge who I trust to screen everybody, make sure that nobody who’s been bitten gets out. Well, I need two somebodies.” He paused. “You for the starboard engineering bulkhead, Chapel for the port one.”

“You want us to split up? You’re mad! If-”

“Doctor,” Spock’s voice came over the intercom, with an unusual undertone that almost sounded anxious. “We do not have the time to debate the merits or shortcomings of this plan. It needs to be enacted sooner than later if we want to save a maximum number of lives.”  
McCoy took a long breath. “I don’t like it.”

“But you’ll do it?”

He looked at Chapel and she nodded resolutely. “Yes,” she said. McCoy sighed. “Yes. We’re going down now.”

Chapel handed him a tricorder and he slung it around his neck, then motioned for her to help him move the lab bench they’d wedged up against the doors. They dragged it away, he pressed the door panel to unlock it, and they both stepped towards the door. Suddenly, he stopped, clapped his hand onto Nurse Chapel’s shoulder.

“Be safe out there,” he said quietly.

She smiled. “You too. See you in Engineering.”

They looked at each other a moment, gathering courage, then darted out the door and set out down the hall opposite ways. As McCoy ran, the ship’s comm system came to life overhead, Kirk’s voice filling the halls as the red alert lights flashed.

“This is your captain speaking. There’s been a slight change of plans. If you are currently injured or bleeding, even just a little bit, please arm yourself and find a safe place to hide. Otherwise, if possible, uninjured crewmembers should report to Engineering deck, where bulkheads 2 and 6 will be open for the next half hour to evacuate personnel out of the quarantine zone. You would be advised to arm yourself. If you come across a fully infected crewmember, lethal force is permitted. They may look weak or like they need help, but remember, they’re dangerous.

“If you cannot make it to Engineering deck, barricade yourself in to the nearest safe room. We will give you further instructions soon, just stay where you are right now.” There was a pause. “Kirk out.”

* * *

 

Sulu turned in his seat. “Further instructions? What further instructions?”

Chekov turned, too. “Yes, vat is ze plan for all ze crewmembers still stuck in ze lockdown area after zis?”

Kirk closed his eyes. “Nothing. There is no plan. Hopefully, most of the healthy crewmembers will make it out, but anybody else…well, they just have to wait it out until we get to the Hypatia starbase in… how long will it be?”

“Four days, sir. Three if we push it.”

Kirk felt his heart sink. “Three days. We’re going to have to wait it out here on the bridge, too.”

“But why did you lie? What was the point of giving them false hope?” Sulu demanded.

Spock answered this time. “If injured and infected crewmembers believe that their only hope lies in getting to Engineering, they may become dangerous. The human self-preservation instinct often overrides all other priorities, and if a single bitten crewmember makes it out of the quarantine zone, they could start a new outbreak and leave nowhere safe. All it takes is one…”—he struggled for a word—“...infected to contaminate the safe zone,” he finished.

“‘Infected’?” asked Kirk. “Can’t we just call them what they are?”

Silence fell over the bridge.

“What, captain,” asked Spock coolly, “would you say that they are, if not infected?”

Kirk hesitated for a moment. “Zombies,” he said simply. “Infected sounds too weak. They’re not, not by a long shot. They’re zombies.”

All eyes locked onto him. Finally, somebody had said it, put into words what they had been thinking, the thoughts they’d been keeping locked in some corner of their mind. By speaking the word, he had broken the chains of fiction, brought it into reality. This was what they’d seen in holovids, but in 3-D technicolor that even a hologram could never recreate. It was creeping through the ship. It was knocking at their door. It was real. It was... real.

Kirk sat forwards in his chair and watched the stars fly by on the viewscreen.

This was going to be a very long three days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...In which we finally hear from the bridge crew! You wouldn't believe how much time I've spent strategizing about how to most effectively contain an outbreak on a starship, and not even for reasons related to this fic. Ah, well. Zombies in space is pretty much my favorite trope at this point.  
>  Next week: everybody hauls behind into Engineering and Scotty gets annoyed that the engine room is full of smelly refugees. Trust me, Scotty, you'll have plenty more to worry about in due time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doctor McCoy tries to get the survivors the hell out of the Enterprise's saucer before the zombified crewmembers get to them. Scotty is mad because they're dumping a bunch of refugees in his engine room, but nobody cares because they don't want to get eaten. Suck it up, Scotty.

McCoy pounded up to the starboard-side Engineering bulkhead to find it closed. He growled in frustration as the five frightened crewmembers he’d picked up on his way came around the corner after him, watching their backs.

“It’s closed?” asked one woman, brown eyes opening wide. “Did they change their mind? Are they going to just keep us locked up in here, with these- these-”

“Keep it together, we just got here. They know we’re coming.” He pressed the intercom. “Scotty?”

“Aye, is that the doctor? Glad to hear ye didn’t get eaten by one of those whatever they are runnin’ around the ship.”

“Yeah, well, so am I. Listen, open up the door by bulkhead 6. I’m ready to begin screening people for entry to Engineering.”

“Be right there, ye just sit tight.”

There was an awkward silence, all six refugees standing, staring, at the door. The three security guards looked uneasy. The woman shivered, rubbing her thin hands over the goosebumps forming on her narrow brown arms. The tall man in command gold scuffed his shoe on the floor, leaving a small reddish smear from its sole. McCoy just glared at the door as though he could make it open through sheer force of his anger.

It slid open with a sound like a sigh of relief and Scotty beamed at them, gesturing inwards. “Welcome tae Engineering. A wee bit humble, but we call it home.”

“Hold on,” said McCoy, holding out a warning hand. “Nobody goes in yet. We’ve got to screen everybody first.” He looked over the small group before him, glanced at the couple more people hurrying down the hall towards them. “You got a phaser?” he asked the security guards. They nodded. “You first, then,” McCoy said. “I want to have somebody guarding the door so we don’t have a total mob scene.” They stood in front of him as he scanned them one by one, then gave them the thumbs up. “You’re clear. Stay here and watch the end of the hall for any… just make sure there’s no trouble.”

They nodded again and stood astride the door, phasers at the ready. McCoy looked back at the growing group beginning to fill the hall and felt grateful to have somebody who was armed at his back, even if he hoped that nobody would have to fire a shot.

He paused for a moment and turned to Scotty. “Has Nurse Chapel arrived at bulkhead 2?” he asked.

“No, not yet,” the chief engineer replied with a shake of his head. “I’ll head down there tae meet her now though, so I’ll be ready tae open the door for her when she gets there.”

McCoy gave a grunt of affirmation and turned back to the crowd. Of course Chapel hadn’t gotten to the other door yet; it was longer from where they’d been in the science lab to her door than his. Of course, a longer way also could mean that she’d run into trouble, and… He stopped. Business now. Worrying later.

He began walking along the line of people with the tricorder, scanning them for lacerations or immune response, waving them along when the tricorder beeped that they were clear. The ones at the front of the line looked fine—most of them had come from this deck, and had gotten through safely in groups—but McCoy could see people arriving that did not look nearly as good. Those ones had had to fight their way down from higher decks, he suspected. Some carried phasers. Some carried makeshift weapons. None, he noted regretfully, had brought another tricorder. Some had blood on them. Almost all looked terrified.

It took about 5 seconds to scan somebody and move on. In any other situation that would’ve been mercifully fast, but considering the number of people he had to get through, it felt 5 seconds too slow. Pause, beep, okay. Pause, beep, good to go. Pause, beep, clean yourself off but you’ll be fine. Pause, beep, you’re fine too. Pause, beep, get in there, fast. How long had he been doing this? Maybe ten minutes? He didn’t know how many people he’d already waved in, but there seemed to be twice as many in the hall, with more straggling in in small, exhausted groups. There was a crew of about 430 on the USS Enterprise. McCoy wasn’t sure how many people were on the bridge in lockdown right now, or how many worked in Engineering, but that still left a lot of people to get to safety. Minus, of course, the… infected. He wondered why, with all the commotion they were making, they hadn’t been attacked yet. He wondered if they had been drawn to the crowd at Nurse Chapel’s door. He sincerely hoped not.

A shriek sounded down the hall from somewhere deeper in the deck, and everybody tensed, drawing closer to the door. McCoy took a deep breath, fighting off claustrophobia. Don’t get distracted; don’t let it get to you. Another shriek came, closer this time, breaking into hysterical sobs. McCoy’s hands shook slightly as he waved the next person through, eyes locked on his tricorder. Don’t let it get to you…

The sobbing came closer and closer until it was obviously in the same hall as them. Everybody stared in horror as the source of the sound came slowly around the corner, and even McCoy looked up in trepidation.

The source of the awful noise was a woman, mousy brown hair falling in wisps across her pale face, half-dragging a length of pipe in one hand and a young asian woman who looked barely conscious in the other. At first McCoy couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the crying woman’s shirt—the red fabric looked strange, off-color, distorted. Then he realized that it wasn’t a red shirt at all. It had been gold at one point, but very little gold showed through the bloody sheen now. The unconscious woman was also covered in red, the source of it being an awful wound in her neck and face that distorted her mouth into a mangled snarl. Nobody was paying attention to the color of her shirt, though; they were staring, fixated, at the wound. Or more accurately, at the tooth marks around it.

Bitten.

Above the screaming sobs a voice rose suddenly, commanding, authoritative.

“Stop.”

Heads turned towards the tall security guard on the left of the door, who was standing alert, hand on phaser. The woman stopped crying for a moment and looked back at him, eyes flashing with terror and anger, and took another purposeful step, opening her mouth and raising her arm as if to say something, to call him some terrible name.

As if in slow motion, McCoy watched the guard draw his phaser, raise it, flick the setting to kill, aim, and fire.

The shot flashed through the air and hit the asian woman’s ruined face square on, a perfect shot. The woman in bloody red staggered back as she watched the phaser bolt vaporize her companion’s face in a flash of red. She swung round, turned to the man who’d fired the shot, face a mask of savage hatred, and screamed with a noise that sounded as though it could tear reality. He raised the phaser again, aimed carefully.

McCoy saw red. The next thing he knew, he had the guard’s arm locked in his, phaser pointed harmlessly to the ceiling. There was a breath when he thought that the screaming woman might rush them, might try to kill them all with her length of pipe and her rage, but she turned tail and fled down the hall, hellish screams echoing behind her.

“Why the hell did yo-” “What were you-” Both McCoy and the guard turned to each other furiously, speaking at the same time. McCoy grabbed his shoulder and shook. “You shot her!” he shouted lividly. “Why the hell did you try to shoot them both? You-” He paused and turned to the nearest person in biomedical blue and handed him his tricorder. “Keep scanning people, keep sending them in,” he told the young man, then turned back to the guard. “I wanted you to keep the peace, to save lives.”

“She was bitten!” he cried. “She was unconscious already, she was probably already dead, you saw the wound. She would’ve tried to kill us all.”

“And the other woman? What about her? You’d kill her?”

“She- she might’ve been bitten too! You saw, there was blood! There- so much blood, she was going to attack me, you saw it!”

“I saw nothing,” growled McCoy. “I saw a terrified woman who’d just seen her companion blasted into damn atoms, and I saw you about to shoot her with your phaser on kill. These have a stun setting for a reason, and that’s still only if you absolutely HAVE to use it!”

He glared at the guard, smoldering with anger, then tore the phaser from the man’s fumbling fingers. “Get in line,” he said, tone deadly serious. He waved the nearest redshirted crewmember over. “You get this now,” he told her, pressing the phaser into her hand. “Use it more wisely than him. It’s a goddamn weapon, not a toy.”

He took the tricorder back from the man who was scanning the refugees, perhaps a sight more roughly than he’d intended, and resumed waving people through. He’d barely sent five or six more people in before footsteps sounded down the hall again, running, shouting following it. A man—McCoy recognized him as Lieutenant Leslie, from security—burst in with two or three last crewmembers, each wielding a makeshift weapon. Leslie was the only one with a phaser. His stony face was marred by a gash above his left eye.

“They’re coming,” he croaked. “They’re behind us.” He gestured around the corner, wiping blood from his face. “They-”

McCoy’s attention was immediately averted by a noise from the tricorder.  _ Blip-blip. _ A warning chime. He looked up into the face of the terrified man across from him, who returned his wide-eyed stare and then shakily pulled up his sleeve to reveal white gauze wrapped tightly around his arm. “I didn’t think-” the man whispered, “I didn’t think it was- it would- honest, I didn’t think I’d-”

A security member leveled a phaser at the unfortunate man, but McCoy raised his hand. “We’re not going to kill anybody if we can help it,” he told the assembled group. “Quarantine. Not in the main saucer, in a safe place.”

“But when he-” spoke up another guard.

“Not when!” snapped McCoy. “If. This isn’t a horror film, we don’t know if the death rate is actually 100%. I’m sure as hell not going to doom somebody to death if they have even the slightest chance of survival. And if they do…” An unearthly moan came down the hall from a place far closer than McCoy was comfortable with. He speeded up a bit. “If one man survives, it could be the saving grace of all of us. So get him into engineering, find him a room, lock it, and mark it.” Another moan. “ _ Now. _ ”

McCoy looked at everybody still in the hall. Over forty people, he estimated. Not enough time to scan them all. But he would try, dammit, he was told to and he would try. He raised his tricorder.

The first infected that came around the corner sparked a scream that made McCoy wince, but Leslie, standing at the back, phaser in hand, dropped it almost instantly. Kill shot. The only thing that would keep one of those crazy bastards down. He gritted his teeth and hoped that they’d be able to keep them at bay.

It was a short-lived hope.

Three more lumbering figures came around the corner, and the scraping and groaning indicated that more followed. Somebody fired at one, but shot wide. Another shot thudded into the chest of a horribly maimed infected man, knocking him back a step but doing little else. Somebody screamed in horror as the closest lunged, only to have its head dented inwards by a wild swing of a metal bar. “If you don’t have a weapon, come this way,” shouted McCoy. “Unarmed crewmembers first.”

Phaser fire lit up the hall as several more of the infected came around the corner. Somebody threw down their weapon and ran towards the door with the other unarmed refugees. “Stay at your post!” shouted McCoy futilely. “Hold them off!”

Scotty popped up behind McCoy, breathing hard. “We’ve got tae close the bulkhead door,” he told him, eyes wide. “Captain's orders. Th’other bulkhead was overrun—they’re okay, but they almost let in one of those crazy infected bastards—and we cannae wait any longer.” He looked past the people pushing through the door at the chaos in the hall and his eyes widened. “They’re almost-”

“Attention,” said the cool voice of the ship’s computer system over the shipwide comm. “The saucer region is now entering lockdown. If you are in the saucer, do not attempt to leave at this time. All exits are being sealed.”

That did it. Everybody in the hallway turned tail and ran towards the door, firing behind their backs or staving off the infected that attempted to follow them. McCoy realized that it was useless to try to fight it and ran forwards, pulling injured and frightened crewmembers to safety. “Get in!” he yelled. “Get in, we’ll scan you in there, just get your ass in!” He grabbed a dropped phaser off of the ground and turned to see the doors sliding closed, a metal lockdown shield sliding over it. “Scotty!” he shouted in desperation.

Scotty darted through the doors as they slid shut and pressed the intercom. “Ye cannae close the lockdown doors yet! Let me- let me talk to the capt’n!” He growled with frustration, wedging his elbow against the intercom panel to keep it on as his fingers jabbed at the door controls. “Ye cannae-”

The doors slammed shut with a terrifying finality.

There was a click as the lock engaged.

McCoy slowly pivoted back to face the hallway and whatever might await him. To his left were two live crewmembers in science blues, backing up to the wall. In front of him stood Lieutenant Leslie, phaser outstretched as he watched the eight bloodied and bitten corpses shuffle steadily down the hall towards them. So, he wouldn’t die alone. McCoy wasn’t sure how to feel about that. 

Leslie’s phaser flashed and the nearest infected collapsed. Seven against four was better odds. McCoy suddenly remembered that he was holding a phaser, too. He raised it. He was no crack shot, but it was surely better than nothing. For a moment he felt almost hopeful, but then he heard more footsteps from around the corner coming methodically towards them and his heart sank. “You want a fight?” he asked the assembled corpses. They turned their heads in that strange, mechanical way towards him, jaws slackening. He took a deep breath as the others began coming around the corner. “I’ll damn well give you one.”

His first shot went wild, his second one glanced one’s shoulder, but the third hit home. Leslie backed up next to him, firing alongside, as more poured around the corner. There had already been a couple of bodies in the hall, but now they were every few feet. It was probably because of this that McCoy failed to notice the corpse near his leg stir until it was too late.

It darted from the floor, lightning-quick, and was in his face before he knew it. Its hands wrapped clawlike around his wrists and its bodyweight pulled him off balance. He stumbled backwards, nearly dropping his phaser, as it opened its jaws to reveal bloodied teeth. It had once been a young woman, McCoy thought. It had been beautiful. Now it was death. Now he was dead.

But somehow, inches before it sunk its maw into him, it stopped. Both McCoy and the thing turned their heads to see both Leslie and one of the other crewmen holding it back, trying to pry its bloodless fingers off of his arms. McCoy could’ve cried with relief. Then the infected thing instead turned its head around to an impossible degree and sunk its teeth into Leslie’s arm, and McCoy instantly returned to panic mode. He fumbled for his phaser, hand wedged between the creature and himself, and fired, vaporizing a good portion of its chest. It fell backwards, taking a little chunk of flesh from Leslie’s arm with it, only to begin dragging itself haphazardly upright again. Leslie tried to reach forwards for his dropped phaser, using his other hand to attempt to staunch the blood running down his arm, but McCoy pulled him back. There were too many others. They were too close.

The four of them retreated back against the wall, McCoy firing in all directions in a last-ditch attempt to hold the infected off. His free hand brushed the cool metal of the lockdown shield and he felt his heart squeeze tightly. He hoped that everybody inside was safe. He hoped Chapel would be alright without him. He hoped they’d be okay.

Then, he felt a new sensation against his palm: the door sliding back behind him. He heard the swish as the interior doors opened and turned lightning quick, shoving the others through the bulkhead door. “In! In!” he shouted frantically. He got to the door right as an infected man jumped suddenly for him. He pressed himself against the wall and got out of the way just in time. Scotty, who’d just appeared on the other side, wasn’t so lucky. He went down with a cry and hit the floor hard, using his shoe to keep the man’s snapping jaws away from him. McCoy darted through the doors and slammed his hand on the closing mechanism, and they swiped shut moments before the rest of the horde reached them.

He turned back to see security guards dragging Scotty and the frenzied corpse in opposite directions.

“Get off, I’m fine!” Scotty groused, pulling himself free of their grip and sitting up. “It didnae get to me, you maniacs, ye can”—he winced almost imperceptibly as a phaser bolt put a stop to the corpse’s thrashing—“you can keep your hair on.”

McCoy helped pull him to his feet. “Well, good to see you in one piece, Mr. Scott.”

The chief of engineering grinned back. “Aye, you too. Thought you were a goner when those doors closed on ye. Almost fried the door mechanism tae get it open in time.” His eyes tracked Leslie, still bleeding, being led out of the room by two other guards. “Well, as fast as I could,” he said a little guiltily. “Those zombies are right bastards.”

McCoy stared back at him. “Zombies?”

“Well, I grant ye it’s not a technical term-”

“Mr. Scott, people are already frightened. I don’t need anybody even more afraid because they think some monster has crawled out of their damn nightmares. We don’t know what this is yet.”

“They’re dead, aren’t they? And trying tae eat us alive?”

“Clinically they could be considered dead, but-”

Scotty shook his head. “Well, as I say, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and wants tae eat your brains, it’s probably a zombie and ye should probably run.”

McCoy narrowed his eyes at him and began to say something, but stopped suddenly at Nurse Chapel’s approach.

“Chapel!” he shouted in relief. She gave him a grin in response. “Good to see you too, Doctor,” she replied. “I heard you almost got left behind.”

“I was sure stuck out there for a hot minute,” he admitted. “Here now, though. Have you been screening the people I missed?”

She gave him a thumbs-up. “We caught only a handful of bitten people between our two groups, and we’ve got them in quarantine now. Unfortunately, that means they got the best rooms, so everybody else is camping out in main Engineering.”

“Making a mess of it, too,” muttered Scotty a little crossly. “It’s bad enough with just Keenser climbing all over my delicate equipment, I don’t need all of ye there too.”

“It’s not as bad as all that,” said Nurse Chapel.

Actually, it was as bad as all that. Main Engineering was a veritable refugee town, with people and blankets and scrounged up supplies littering every surface. Clumps of survivors clung to every platform, sat on every catwalk, sprawled across the floor like patches of moss growing on stones.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” Chapel said quietly, surveying the havoc stretching out in front of them.

McCoy raised an eyebrow. “Hell of a time for poetry,” he commented.

She said nothing, just watched the people huddle together. He watched them for a minute, too, then frowned. “They really look like they’re settling in,” he said. “How long do you think we’ll be stuck here?”

She had no answer. 

McCoy looked over the crowd, trying to estimate how many were there. Not quite three hundred, he guessed? Probably a good deal fewer. That left over a hundred people unaccounted for. Hunkering down on the bridge, dead, infected, trapped somewhere in the ship… he didn’t want to think of what the others were going through. Nobody was going to come and rescue them, he realized. As uncertain as they were, they were the safest ones on this entire ship. Hurtling through a vacuum at far over lightspeed, surrounded by a virus that wanted them dead. They were the safest by far.

He didn’t feel reassured by that at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got long fast! I guess I should've called this chapter the "McCoy is in a bad situation" chapter and not the "Scotty gets mad about engineering being full of people" chapter, because there's a grand total of 2 sentences of Scotty being annoyed vs. a whole lot of McCoy being in a bad place, but it's whatever.  
> Next week: We meet our last group. Not everybody made it out of the saucer...


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not everybody made it to the (relative) safety of the Engineering decks. Meanwhile, in the saucer...

It wasn’t that Lieutenant Kevin Riley had never imagined himself hiding out in a closet with a pretty girl before. It was just that in his head, he’d imagined significantly less zombies being involved. Also, he didn’t expect having to pee this badly, either. He’d never suspected that the biggest downside of the apocalypse would be not being able to find a decent bathroom. It was a better problem, he supposed, than worrying that you’d be eaten alive, which (judging from the sounds that had been coming from outside the door for the past hour or so) was another very real threat. But in order to get to a bathroom, he’d have to leave the barricaded closet, thereby exposing himself to the crazy flesheaters outside, and… well, you could see his problem.

If he’d been alone, Riley would probably have quietly… relieved himself in a corner, but that was absolutely no way to act around a lady. Especially not such an attractive one as this, even if the world was ending and all that. It occurred to Riley that he had no clue what her name was. He resolved to change that before they got out of this mess. If they got out. And found a bathroom.

He leaned towards where she crouched in the darkness, wide eyes shining bright in contrast to her inky skin. “Hey,” he whispered. She started slightly, then responded in turn. “Hey.”

“We can’t just stay here forever,” Riley whispered. “I think we should risk finding a safer place. We don’t have food, we don’t have water, and my legs are getting reeeeally cramped.”

There was a moment of near-silence, her subdued breathing amplified by the closeness of the space as she considered it. She’d been in this closet before he had; he’d ducked in to discover her already there and he suspected that at this point she was feeling more claustrophobic than he was. “Where would we go?” she finally asked.

“The rec room is just down the hall,” Riley said, voice quiet but eager. “We could camp out there, use the replicators, wait for this all to blow over. It’s only seven doors down, really. It wouldn’t be that hard.”

They looked at eachother for a long moment, trying to muster the courage to leave their small safe haven. Zombies were terrifying, but the thought of getting out of that tiny space was irresistibly enticing.  Food, drinks, a comfortably large, well-lit room, tables, chairs… a bathroom… a comfortable place to wait it all out. She stood.

“All right,” she said.

Riley squinted through the gloom at the various objects in the closet with them. Most looked useless as weaponry—a rack of maintenance tools, an emergency medkit, some handheld UV sanitation units. But there were a couple of upright sanitation units with long, metal handles that looked like they might be able to do some damage in a pinch. He detached the bottom section and held the handle in both hands. There wasn’t much room in the closet to move, but he gave a small experimental swipe through the air with it. He grinned. This was a little bit better. It wasn’t far at all to the rec room, but if they met with trouble on the way, he’d be ready to deal with it.

He leaned close to the door and listened for movement outside in the hall. Behind him, the woman detached the handle from another cleaning unit and passed it uneasily from hand to hand. “Anything out there?” she said, almost under her breath.

Riley shook his head. “I think we’re clear.” He reached to remove the equipment barring the door, then hesitated. He turned to her, his back to the door, and tilted his head to the side. “I meant to ask,” he said, as suavely as he could manage, “what’s your name?”

She flashed him a subdued, amused smile. “Lieutenant Masters,” she told him.

He nodded. “Masters. Cool. I’m Lieutenant Riley. Kevin. I’m Kevin Riley.” A pause stretched thin between them. “Do you… have a first name, then?” he asked hopefully.

She smiled. “Yes.”

He waited, hoping she’d elaborate, but she was silent. Another uncomfortable pause hung between them. He fought the urge to cross his legs. He still really needed to pee.

“So… Riley,” she said finally. “Is the coast clear?”

He shook his head to clear it and turned back to the door to remove the equipment still in the way. “Ah, yeah. Right. Let’s head out.”

He cleared out the barricade with a little effort, took his makeshift weapon in hand, pressed the door panel, and then they were off, into the unknown.

 

There weren’t any wandering zombies in the hall, but there sure were signs of them. Phaser burns marked the wall. A faint blood splatter was drying on the floor. An actual human forearm lay off to the side, making Riley queasy. He sorely hoped that  it had been removed from one of the undead and not the terrified living. He heard Masters choke quietly as she saw it, suppressing a cry. He felt the same way.

They crept down the hallway, hearts in their throats, trying not to make a sound. Somewhere ahead of them, they heard a soft, gurgling moan. Masters shot him a look of terror, but he leaned close to her and whispered “They're still a ways away” into her ear. She nodded and they pressed on.

Riley’s chest was hammering with anxiety by the time they reached the door to the rec room. He let himself release the breath he was still holding as he reached to open the door. It had only been a handful of yards, but it had felt like the longest walk he'd ever taken. They'd made it without seeing a single zombie.

He rejoiced too soon.

The doors to the rec room slid open to reveal a scene that looked ripped from a horror flick. Only one body was still on the floor; the others had staggered to their feet despite the degree to which they'd been maimed and were now either tearing into the corpse at their feet or shambling unsteadily around the perimeter of the room. Their heads all swiveled robotically towards the two horrified newcomers, dribbling jaws opening in a twisted parody of a smile. Masters screamed.

Riley screamed.

And then, all hell broke loose.

The zombie closest to them broke off from the group and lunged forwards in a move far faster and more graceful than he would've expected possible. Riley staggered back with legs that felt like lead, pulse pounding so hard he could barely think. Masters screamed again, a high, thin sound, and the zombies in the room answered with a hungry groan of their own. They were going to be fed again soon.

Masters’ makeshift weapon fell to the ground with a clatter as she retreated, and the sharp metallic sound seemed to make the approaching zombies more excited. But somehow, it served to clear Riley’s head. Weapon! Right!

He gritted his teeth, took up the rod in both hands, assumed a batting stance, and as the zombie in front of him stepped closer, he swung.

It was a beautiful swing, arcing through the air like a dream and landing with a solid clang on the side of the zombie’s skull. That, however, was where his luck stopped. In his mind, he'd imagined its head imploding, slo-mo style, under his blow. In reality, that… did not happen. Instead, it bounced off the thing’s cranium, leaving nothing more than a dent and sending a shockwave from the impact down the rod and into Riley's hands. He almost dropped it in surprise at the pain. Now _that_ never happened in the movies.

The zombie's next grab at him caught the end of the rod. Riley gripped his end harder, frantically trying to pull it away from the corpse's steely grip. He could hear the others closing in on him more than he could see them; he was succumbing to panic-induced tunnel vision. He heard Masters give a gasp behind him and his stomach twisted. He didn't want to die like this, helpless, unable to protect her, having to pee. What kind of a pathetic, miserable death was that? He closed his eyes and let out a quiet sob.

The next moment, all air exited his lungs as a searing bolt tore past inches from his face. The inexorable pull on the metal tube abruptly ended, throwing him wildly off balance, and he toppled over. His eyes opened wide in surprise, blinking from the flash of red that'd been visible even through his closed eyelids. A phaser. Phaser fire? He wasn't dead?

Riley made an attempt to figure out what was going on. From his new vantage point, the floor, he couldn't see all that much, but he could at least tell that somebody new was on the scene—somebody with a phaser. He sat up. Make that two somebodies, a wide-shouldered man in security red and an alien woman in gold. Both were quite handy with a phaser, and were cutting down zombies as they got close.

“Door!” the woman shouted, pointing at the door panel. “Door, you idiot!”

Riley stared in incomprehension, but Masters ran forwards and slammed a hand on the door mechanism, causing them to close on one of the dead crewmen's arms. It gave a confused grunt and slipped its other hand through the crack, trying to pry itself free, but the alien woman put a stop to that with a well-aimed blast. The doors snapped shut and clicked as Masters locked them with shaking hands.

“Who are you?” Riley sputtered as the man helped him to his feet. “Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but who are you and how'd you find us?”

“I am K!iell,” the woman told him, pronouncing the K with a strange emphasis, like a click in her throat. A name from some alien dialect he didn't know, no doubt. “And that is Donovan. He is the one you want to thank for your rescue, by the way. We were just going to get more phasers when he heard your screams.”

“Thank you for saving us,” Masters said quietly.

K!iell frowned. “You aren't saved yet,” she muttered.

A moan came down the hall. “Zombies, ten o'clock,” Donovan called.

“Ten o'clock?” asked K!iell incredulously. “What do you mean?”

“Like on a clock face. An analog clock, I mean.”

“I haven't ever seen an ‘analog’... What does that mean?”

“No, like…” Donovan made an expansive gesture with his phaser that made Riley hope that it was on stun. “Look, if you're facing twelve, and behind you is six, and-”

“We are facing different directions, stupid!”

“Maybe we should just not go that way?” Riley suggested, pointing at the corpse coming up the hallway.

“Good idea,” agreed Donovan, a little relieved.

“I am afraid we have to,” K!iell said. “The others are down that way.” She raised her phaser, and Donovan did too. “Time to move.”

They fired on the infected corpse, felling it, then approached carefully and shot it a couple more times—“Double tap,” Donovan said—to vaporize its head and make sure it stayed down. Riley couldn't help but feel a little grateful for that; it kept him from trying to check its face to see if it’d once been someone he knew. Then, after double-checking that the cost was clear, they ran.

They went tearing down the passageway, the two with phasers in front, Riley bringing up the rear. He still clutched the metal sanitation handle tightly, its solidity in his hands giving him a bizarre sense of comfort. At this point, he no longer had any delusions about how useful it would be at fending off zombies—even if it could've been an effective weapon, he lacked the strength to use it—but he wasn't quite ready to let it go. It was something, at the very least. It was something.

A zombie burst from a door suddenly, arms snapping closed alarmingly close to Masters. She pirouetted out of the way with a cry, and Riley dodged to the right to avoid its grasp as he passed.

“Shoot it!” Masters cried, pointing behind her. “Shoot it shoot it shoot it!”

“You shhhh!” hissed K!iell. “The more you scream, the more they will hear us! We are almost to the others, anyways.”

“The others?” Masters asked at the same time as Riley said “Other zombies?”

“The others… the other survivors. We are all trapped in here, you know.” Donovan pulled up suddenly in front of her and she almost ran full tilt into his back. “What is it?” she demanded.

He held up a hand. “Listen.”

Far off, but coming closer, a long, continuous woman’s scream pierced the air. The four looked at each other.

“We have phasers,” Donovan said, catching K!iell’s expression. “We can't just ignore whoever that is.”

“Do we have time for this?” she asked, looking nervously down the hall.

“We have all the time in the world. The zombies aren't in any hurry, why should we be? Kie-”—he stumbled over her name slightly— “K!iell, I'm a security guard. Protecting people is my job.”

There was a moment of quiet in which the screaming carried down the hall, seeming to come closer.

K!iell sighed, then nodded resolutely. “We can't ignore her,” she agreed. “We have to find her.”

As it turned out, it was more that the screaming woman found them. The sound grew closer until it was apparent that she was moving towards them, fast, her cries increasing in volume until it became almost unbearable and she burst around the corner in a panic. Her eyes he wide as she saw them, and she abruptly fell silent and crumpled to the ground in exhaustion.

The ragtag group looked on in astonishment at the pitiable figure before them. She was covered in blood, absolutely drenched in it,  haphazardly sticking down her wispy brown hair and staining her shirt a blotchy red and brown. In her hand she clutched a length of bloodstained heavy-looking pipe that appeared to have been used against the infected with more success than Riley’d had. In spite of the gore, she seemed unharmed herself, a fact that was far less reassuring than it should have been.

“Mary.” Three pairs of eyes turned to Donovan as he lowered his phaser and stepped towards her. “Mary,” he repeated softly, “you're safe. You've got to get up, you're safe now.”

She didn't respond, didn't even look up, just sat there, shaking. If she knew who he was or recognized her own name, she didn't show it. Her breathing was so tight and ragged that she looked on the verge of unconsciousness.

“Is she okay?” whispered Masters. Both K!iell and Riley gave her a look. She was very obviously not.

Donovan stepped towards the cowering woman again. He crouched down to her level. “Hey. It's okay. We're gonna bring you someplace safe, okay, Mary? You can stop fighting.”

Somehow, these words got through to her, and her head snapped up, terrified face turning to face his. Her wide eyes took in his firm jaw, red shirt, black boots, his phaser in his hand. She stared. Her mouth opened.

If asked about it later, Riley would have claimed that he'd heard a snapping noise, like a mind stretched to its limit finally giving way, when she moved. In truth, though, it was perfectly silent when she picked up the pipe and swung it wildly at Donovan's head. It was perfectly silent, that is, until it met his skull with a truly horrendous crunch.

Riley knew from unfortunate experience that a human head is quite the difficult thing to crush. But the pipe she was holding was heavier than his metal rod, and she seemed to have put every ounce of strength in her frame into the blow. It seemed to the three horrified onlookers that one moment Donovan crouched there, all gentle seriousness, the next moment replaced by a grotesque _thing_ , head deformed inwards. Nobody breathed for a terrible heartbeat. Then the woman raised the pipe again and K!iell tore Riley away. “RUN!” she roared, grabbing Masters’ arm as well as they turned tail and bolted.

They'd run down several halls before anyone said a word besides Masters’ rough crying and their ragged breaths. “She’s not-” Riley choked on the thought of the woman's face for a moment. “She's not following us.”

“I know,” K!iell panted through gritted teeth. She didn't slow down.

They went around the corner, down the next hall, and took a left before she pulled up at the second door down. A private break room.

Masters was still crying. “We left him,” she sobbed. “We left Donovan behind.”

K!iell shook her head. “No. He… he was dead before he hit the ground.” She whispered something—a curse? a prayer?—in a language Riley didn’t understand. “We couldn’t do anything. Not for him.”

She fumbled with the wall intercom, hands shaking so badly she could barely press the call button. “This is K!iell,” she said. “With two strays. We- I- lost Donovan. Not zombies, some rogue stray got him.”

A sharp intake of breath could be heard at the other end, then the doors slid open. “Oh my god,” the haggard-looking woman inside said, looking them over. “Come in, quick. Oh, my god. Donovan.”

They hurried in as fast as they could and the woman sealed the door behind them. Inside the break room, five people turned to face the newcomers. Their piercing gazes made Riley feel acutely uncomfortable, as though it was somehow his fault that the security guard hadn't made it back. The thought made him feel… itchy. Or maybe that was the effect of coming down from the adrenaline high that'd been keeping him going since he left the safety of the supply closet. Now that his life wasn't in immediate danger, reality was beginning to reassert itself, starting with the twin realizations that he was gripping the sanitation handle so hard that his fingers ached and that he still really, really had to pee. He gingerly uncurled his fingers and the rod clattered noisily to the ground, making everyone wince. “Sorry,” he said hastily, leaning to pick it up. When he straightened up again, it occurred to him that the occupants of the room were all still staring at him, and he felt he should say something.

“I'm Lieutenant Riley,” he said by way of introduction, then, as she didn't seem to be about to say anything herself, added “And that's Lieutenant Masters.” He gave as friendly of a smile as he could manage.

“So, ah, first things first. Is there a bathroom?”

* * *

 

As it happened, there was a bathroom—one of the reasons the small room had been chosen as their refuge—and Riley was grateful to be able to enjoy its amenities even in such ridiculous circumstances. A cushy sort of apocalypse, he thought as he splashed water on his face, where you had running hot water. Well, he supposed it wasn't exactly an apocalypse if it was a disaster on just one starship. When your world only consisted of 430 or so people on a single vessel, though, it sure felt like it.

When Riley came back out, the only people who had moved were K!iell and Masters, the former having sat the shaking girl down to try to calm her. Everyone else merely sat where they were. It wasn't like they had much else to do.

Riley walked over to the intercom and pressed the bridge transmission button, not really expecting any response. To his surprise, Uhura’s calm voice crackled to life. “Please remain calm,” she said. “If you are not already in a safe place, proceed to one now. We-”

“Hey! Hey Uhura!” he shouted in excitement. “We're already in a safe spot, can you tell us how to get out of here?” Uhura’s voice just kept talking. “Uhura?”

“Prerecorded message,” a man in torn science blues told him, not looking up from the tricorder he was fiddling with. “Just basic safety information, recommendations about safe rooms, don't hug any ‘infected’, that sort of stuff. You get the same thing if you try to call Engineering.”

“What?” Riley sputtered. “They cut us off?”

“Yeah, about an hour ago, the same time that they disabled the automatic sliding doors. That's one good thing about zombies, they barely have the IQ to tell the difference between a closed door and a wall.”

Riley was still mad about the intercom. “And we can't, I don't know, bypass the message and actually call someone?”

“Not from here, we can't, not without access to the communications consoles. And besides, look around. Do you see a single red shirt? All the engineers are holed up in lower decks, and all we have- we had-” the man suddenly wouldn't meet Riley's eyes. “Donovan. But it's not like he could put a tricorder back together if he'd had the plans on front of him. Good guy, though. Most security types are. Were.”

Riley had a sickening memory of red blood on red fabric and kicked the wall beneath the intercom as hard as he could in suppressed fear and frustration. It hurt, which only made him more annoyed.

“So what are we supposed to do?” Riley snapped. “Die in here?”

“Wait,” the man said, returning to his tricorder.

“For what? For rescue? They won't even talk to us.”

“The message says we're heading to the Hypatia base for backup right now.”

“And if they're lying?”

K!iell looked up at that. “And why would they lie? They want to live, as much as we do.”

Riley glared at the wall, aware that he wasn't making much sense at this point, not really caring.

“At least we could do something other than sit here and twiddle our thumbs,” he grumbled. “I don't know, get out there. Shoot some zombies.”

K!iell stood and faced him. “Riley,” she said. “Donovan and I had a mission to bring back more phasers so we could fight our way out of here. We agreed that if something happened, if it turned out that there were too many out there to fight, nobody should try to go out there again. Donovan was a trained member of Starfleet security. I am IiyaK!in, and I have reflexes to rival any human.” She shook her head. “Not all decks were empty as this one. All the phasers had been taken… we found two. One abandoned on the floor, one in the clutches of a dead man. When I pried it from his hands, it stood, and almost bit me. Donovan barely saved me.”

Riley listened, eyes wide. “You- you're not human. Can you even be infected?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I do not wish to find out.”

“If it's really true that it came to the ship with the landing party, then it's species-hopping virus,” the man with the tricorder cut in. “The Solani got it, we got it… Hodgkins’ law. I wouldn't like your chances.”

“One doesn't need to be infected to die,” K!iell added softly.

Everyone grew silent as the quiet, unmistakable sound of footsteps dragged their way sluggishly past the door, stopped for an agonizing moment, then shuffled on.

The occupants of the small room looked at each other. Locked doors couldn't keep out fear.

Riley plopped down in a chair and put his head in his hands. Sure, there was other people, bathrooms, food, but at its heart this was just hiding in the closet all over again. “I hate this,” he moaned quietly.

The man beside him snapped his tricorder shut and gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, we all do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will you look at that? Two more TOS characters sneaking into my ostensibly AOS fic. Riley is the best character, and I'd be remiss in my duties if I left him out. Also, I didn't want to rely too heavily on original characters, though I did end up getting quite attached to them. Even Donovan. Sorry about that, Donovan.  
> Sorry for the pause between this chapter and the last, by the way. I have in no way given up on this fic, but school sometimes makes things drag.  
> Next week: A short interlude on the bridge


	6. Chapter 6

An exhausted cheer went up as the turbolift doors opened and eight uninjured crewmembers stumbled back onto the bridge. “Everyone safe and sound and accounted for,” announced Sulu, wiping the blade of his sword carefully on his pantleg. He sheathed it and turned to help the man behind him unload the blankets and water that was pulled up in his arms. Everyone on the away team not armed with a phaser (or sword) were piled up with supplies provided by the nearest replicator. The entire bridge crew, tired to the last man, pitched in, passing out supplies and stacking extras in the corner and under the consoles.

“Excellent job, Mr. Sulu!” Kirk commended, whumping the helmsman good-naturedly on the back.

Sulu nodded back. “Thank you, sir.”

“How was it?” Kirk asked him.

“Not as bad as we'd feared, sir. It seems that the mass egress to engineering drew most of them down to the lower decks. We were never outnumbered, and the few we met went down pretty quickly.” He clapped his hand to the hilt of the sword at his side and Kirk shook his head.

“You could've had a phaser, you know. Longer range, standard-issue, there's enough to go around.”

Sulu’s face cracked into a tired half-smile. “And miss out on all the fun? I don't think so, sir.”

Kirk shook his head again and turned to carefully look over the members of the bridge crew. None seemed unduly traumatized, he noted, given their situation. On the other hand, the situation itself was a lot to take in. Less than 24 hours ago, Kirk had been worried about their diplomatic situation with the Solani. Now, he'd just spent the last half hour pacing the bridge in barely-concealed anxiety as eight crewmembers—the “away team”, they called them, as though the ship was some dangerous new planet—had run to the nearest replicator. It would be hard to not be at least a little traumatized at the thought of the undead wandering the halls of the Enterprise, even more so if you'd met them face-to-face. Unless, if course, you were Spock.

Kirk stole a look at the Vulcan. He seemed the very image of calm control in a crisis, but Kirk was beginning to suspect that even be was feeling the strain. It was something about his eyes, Kirk thought, then frowned. No, that wasn't it. Spock's cool stare was inscrutable as ever. Kirk was never really sure what was different about Spock's tiredly impassive expression, or sarcastically impassive expression, or furiously impassive expression, but there was some subtle nuance that one learned to pick up after serving with him for long enough.

He strolled nonchalantly over and stood next to his first officer. “Feeling a little tired, Spock?” he asked innocently.

Spock arched an eyebrow in apparent incomprehension. “Tired, captain? Vulcan physiology allows us to withstand longer periods of physical duress with less rest than humans. Furthermore-”

“I wasn't asking about Vulcan physiology, Spock,” Kirk interrupted quietly. “I was asking about you, right now.”

Spock took a moment to process that. “I will be all right, captain. Your concern may be more rightly directed towards the off shift, many of whom I believe have not slept in up to 46 hours.”

Kirk frowned slightly at Spock's deflection of the question, but had to concede his point. If nobody said anything, the bridge crew was liable to run themselves into the ground. Even Starfleet officers needed a break sometimes.

“Alright, crew,” he announced to the bridge, “lights to 40% in fifteen minutes. Off shift, grab a blanket and find somewhere to lie down. Even if you can't sleep, I expect to see you resting. That's an order.”

A murmur rose from the crew as people traded places and shut down consoles. Uhura tapped on Kirk’s shoulder and quietly said something in his ear. “Oh, and by request, no more than 5 minutes in the bathroom, please,” he added above the stir. Chekov made a face at him from across the room, and Uhura gave a small laugh.

“Uh, did I just get in the middle of some argument?” Kirk asked her. She patted him consolingly on the arm. “Don't worry your pretty little head about it,” she replied.

He tried for a moment to determine whether that had been an insult or not, then decided that it wasn't worth the time to think about it.

“So, what's the latest from Engineering?” Kirk said.

Uhura’s careful fingers danced across the communications console.“The doctor reports three hundred and nine refugees in the Engineering section, approximately. He thinks there might be more than that, or perhaps less, but can't be certain because they ‘won't stop running all over the damned place’.”

Kirk smiled at that. That was the same old Bones he knew.

“They screened everyone, and eighteen people were put in quarantine for suspicious or possibly infected injuries,” Uhura said. “The virus should have run its course by now, and they'll be checking on them shortly to see if there are any survivors. And Scotty's called 6 times to complain about people crawling on top of or messing with various engine components.” She allowed herself a smile. Of course, the Scotsman's priorities never wavered, even in a crisis situation. Him and his engines.

Kirk patted the console approvingly. “All right. Keep me updated.”

She nodded affirmatively, then suddenly caught his arm as he turned to go.

“Captain.” Her voices was soft. “I'm still receiving distress calls from the saucer section. A handful of survivors, a couple of groups.”

Kirk sighed, knowing where she was going with this, not looking it any more than her. “Lieutenant, the safest thing for them to do right now is-”

“Is for them to stay where they are, I know. It's… it's in the prerecorded message. But can't I-”

“I'm sorry,” Kirk said. “I truly am. But no contact until we have a plan.”

Uhura met him with a stare as strong and solid as stone. “They think we've given up on them.”

Had they? Was that it? What was better, false hope or no hope at all? Kirk looked down at his Starfleet-issue boots and opened his mouth to begin speaking, but the communications officer's expression abruptly changed and she held up a finger.

“Hold on,” she said, tappimg hey earpiece, then blinked in astonishment. “Yes, of course,” she said, then—after a momentary pause—“I'll tell the captain. Of course. Yes, but he might not like it.”

She turned wide eyes to the captain. “It's Doctor McCoy,” she told him. “You're going to want to hear this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hear what? Hear what, Uhura??? Oh man, I can barely stand the suspense!  
> Next week: a longer chapter, in which we discover just what McCoy is so eager to tell the captain, and discover the man who just might hold the secret to saving them all. Don't worry, though—our story is barely half over, and there's plenty of zombie-bashing yet to come. Things are getting interesting!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new discovery gives the crew new hope—and McCoy wonders if maybe he hasn't gone nuts, because for once he's the one proposing the stupidly risky plan.

“Chapel,” he said, eyes glittering, “you're going to want to see this.”

She looked up from the disinfectant packs she was counting and stared at the doctor in surprise. When McCoy had left to check on the quarantined crewmembers, he’d been expecting a gloomy counting of the dead. Now, though, he looked absolutely thrilled.

“Why? What’s going on?” she asked as he took her arm and pulled her into the hall, dodging someone sleeping up against the corridor wall (not an uncommon sight, now). “Just tell me.”

“We put 18 people into quarantine. 12 of them turned overnight. 5 turned out to have been uninfected,” he panted over his shoulder. “But the last one…”

“The last one?”

“Here, see for yourself.”

He pointed to a room off to the side and they entered. Inside, a makeshift sickbed had been set up on top of some crates of spare parts. Scotty stood beside it, eyebrows knotted in a way that indicated he was mentally composing a long rant on the use and misuse of engineering supplies, but what captured her attention was the man lying under a blanket on the bed. It was Lieutenant Leslie, the man who'd been bitten when protecting McCoy earlier. He lay there, bandage wrapped tightly around his arm, blinking at them as they entered. Last time she'd seen him, he had been bitten, bleeding, and most certainly infected. She hadn't expected to see him alive ever again. And yet here he was, undeniably alright. Last time she’d seen him, he was bleeding, scared, and definitely infected.  Tired, sick maybe, but one hundred percent alive.

Her eyes widened. “He survived.”

McCoy’s smile spread and he handed her a tricorder. “Look,” he said, stabbing a finger at the readout. “He's coming down from a fever. No encephalitis, massive immune response… Antibodies!”

She took a sharp breath in. “The tricorder lists the pathogen as nothing but ‘unknown agent’,” she pointed out. “You’re certain that this is the same thing?”

“Perfectly. I checked the chemical structure, and the protein matches with 99.6% accuracy, allowing for mutations. Same thing in all the fully infected patients, except his viral load began going down less than three hours after infection.” The doctor patted Leslie on his uninjured arm. “You’ve got a hell of an immune system, that’s for sure. Your T-cell count went through the roof before that bug could get the drop on you.”

“Well, that’s all very good for Mr. Leslie,” Scotty interjected, cross from people abusing engineering equipment and recklessly using medical jargon he didn’t understand, “but for the rest of us? Can ye magic up a vaccine, a cure?”

McCoy’s face became a touch more sober. “Not a cure,” he said. “Anyone infected is as good as dead, and I’m a doctor, not a necromancer. But if we had the proper equipment, we could definitely develop a vaccine. Thing is, we don’t have the proper equipment. Not by a long shot.”

“Maybe I could rig something up?” Scotty suggested.

McCoy raised an eyebrow. “What, can you assemble a microcentrifuge, e-cat gene sequencer, and organic protein synthesizer from spare parts now?”

“Microcentrifuge? Aye, of course. E-cat gene… whatever, I dinnae think so.”

“Well, we had some, but they're decks above us in no-man's-land. So long as they’re up there and we’re down here, we might as well not have them in the first place.”

They lapsed into silence together, the excitement in the room deflating to flat reality. Leslie suppressed a cough awkwardly behind them.

Eyes met.

“No,” Chapel said, not entirely sure what she was saying no to, not wanting to think about it too hard from fear that by voicing it she’d make it a reality.

“It wasnae’ my idea,” Scotty said hastily.

“It would be too dangerous,” McCoy insisted. “Idiotic. The captain would never agree.”

“What would be too dangerous?” Lieutenant Leslie asked hesitantly from his place on the bed behind them, beginning to feel a bit out of the loop.

The doctor was already reaching for the intercom on the wall. “Getting the machines that are going to save all our lives.”

  


“I can't let you do this, Bones,” Kirk sighed over the comm.

“A vaccine, Jim! That's what we're talking. An end to this absolute nightmare.”

“We are currently four days and nineteen hours from the Hypatia research starbase, which will no doubt be fully supplied with a microbiology research laboratory,” an insufferably Vulcan voice cut in. “To risk lives in an attempt to retrieve equipment readily available—”

“Available in five days, sure. And what are we going to do ’till then? Twiddle our damn thumbs? Not everybody is content to just sit back and wait for all this to blow over. We have three hundred people trying to live in Engineering, and we barely have room for everyone. Scotty’s been climbing the walls like a deranged spider monkey-” the engineer gave an indignant “Hey!” but the doctor went on- “but we all are. They’re not automatons. They’re scared people who think their worst nightmares have come to life, and they need hope. Hope that they’re not just cowering prisoners on their own goddamn ship, waiting to either be rescued or eaten alive. We can give them that, but I need those machines!”

Kirk gave a low whistle. “Nice speech, Bones.”

“So you’ll allow it?”

“As your captain, I can’t. Spock is right, it’s risky.”

McCoy would’ve grabbed Kirk right there and then if he hadn’t been fourteen decks away. “Three people, that’s all we’d need. Three lives for the lives of everyone on this ship, and everyone back on Solanum XII. How’s that for your Vulcan logic?”

“You’re planning on going, of course?” Kirk asked.

“Of course. I’m not about to send anyone else into that hellscape without going myself.”

“We’re having a health and safety crisis, Bones. I don’t want to send the best medical man I have into the line of fire.”

McCoy scoffed. “You know as well as I do that Chapel is a sight better than I am. You’ll do alright with her in the meantime.  Or is this your concern as a friend, not a captain?”

Silence answered his question better than words could have.

“Jim,” McCoy said softly. “If you were here, if you were me, what would you do?”

“Since when do you think that anything I’d do would be a good idea?” Kirk laughed.

Since never. Since it was me going into danger, and not you? Since the world went to hell and the dead began walking again.

“Since you stopped being around to do the stupid things yourself,” McCoy replied. “Because god forbid we have a moment of sanity on this ship.”

Kirk grinned despite himself. “Well, you’re on your own down there. You know the situation better than I do. I can’t stop you.”

“Actually, captain,” Spock pointed out, “we do have the ability to disable all doors and access tubes from the bridge, effectively stopping the doctor from carrying out his irrational and unnecessary plan.”

Scotty actually snorted. “And ye really think that’ll keep us in here? I’ve got sixty engineers just itchin’ tae take something apart and be useful for a change. We’d welcome something tae do down here.”

“Doing so against direct orders from a superior officer would be considered mutiny, Mr. Scott. Do you really feel that this is necessary, given our current situation?”

“Hold up, hold up,” Kirk cut in. “I haven’t made my decision yet, no orders have been gone against. Alright. Bones, I hereby clear you for a mission into the saucer section. Take just as many people as you need to carry the equipment, plus a security guard or two. Keep us updated on how it’s going at all times. There. Now I’ve made my decision.”

“Captain.” Spock’s voice didn’t change in cadence, but everyone could feel the irritation coming off his words nonetheless. “I must continue to insist that our time, personnel, and resources will be much better spent in attempting to contact outside help from the Hypatia starbase. Any other plans serve no purpose but to put valued crewmembers in needless danger.”

McCoy began preparing some choice words to call the Vulcan, but had his venomous thoughts interrupted by Scotty before he could come up with a satisfactory comeback. “Well,” the engineer ventured, “I might have an idea ‘bout that.”

Spock stopped. “Go on.”

“You’ve been keeping awfully mum about what’s going on up there, but I’m guessing tha’ the only reason we dinnae already have a fleet o’ rescue ships coming our way is because we haven’t got the focus tae transmit long range to the Hypatia. Something’s gone balls up, hasn’it.” McCoy suppressed a chuckle at the thought of how Spock was taking that last comment.

“Something has indeed gone...balls up, as you might rather crudely put it,” the Vulcan said stiffly. “We are for unforeseen reasons unable to send long-distance subspace messages on Hypatia’s frequency. We suspect that there is a fault in the focusing array on the communication dish.”

“Aye, and if there was I couldnae do a thing for it, but I suspect that it’s the connection, nae the dish itself. And the relay that I would have tae fix is right outside the deck eleven medical lab.”

Spock thought it over. “My feelings have not changed,” he said eventually, “regarding the dangerous nature of this plan. However, if we can create a vaccine and contact the starbase, it may be worth the risk.”

“All right, then,” Kirk said, and McCoy could hear a faint smile in his voice. “Scotty, you’re cleared too. Bones, how many people do you need to carry that equipment?”

“Just the two of us will do, to carry the e-cat and the protein synthesizer. Everything else is pretty small.”

“Good,” Kirk said. “And take a member of security with you, too. Stay safe. Kirk out.”

 

It was a little bit harder to find a security guard than they’d anticipated. There were a good deal of redshirts about, but almost all were engineering types who hadn’t even seen a member of the undead, having been in the engineering section when the crisis had broken out. You could usually tell by their faces. The ones who’d seen the undead, up-close and personal, seemed to retain a bit of the corpses’ hollow gaze in their eyes. Those who hadn’t just looked tired, or bored. They didn’t know. They couldn’t know.

“That one,” Scotty said, pointing to a man in red sitting on the catwalk, staring at his knees. “He’s nae part of engineering, I know that much.”

They climbed up, picking their way around crewmembers sitting or talking on the stairs as they climbed. Some moved out of their way, but some just sat listlessly where they were and quietly watched them pass. One particularly small, wrinkly-faced crewmember blew a raspberry at the chief engineer as he passed. Scotty just shot Keenser a look.

“Excuse me, are you a member of Security?” McCoy asked. The man turned slowly and looked up at them.

“Why?” he asked, a bitter edge coming into his voice.

McCoy exchanged a quick look with Scotty. They were trying not to let news of their plan spread, but what the hell. They couldn’t ask him to come without telling him what they were up against. “We’re going back into the saucer to retrieve some important medical equipment,” McCoy informed him. “We want backup. Are you in?”

He seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then his face hardened into unmistakable hostility. “No,” he spat. “I’ve never held a phaser in my life. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone from security here, anyways. And you know why? Because they all got torn to pieces, that’s why. Because red looks real tasty, and nobody bothers to tell security what’s going on, even though security always gets the worst of whatever is going down, doesn’t it? Yeah. I’m not security.”

McCoy cast a critical eye over the man’s black eye, torn sleeve, shirt sporting a couple of dark, crusted spots of blood. “Not security, huh. Then what division are you in?”

The man scowled. “Communications.” He picked up a ration bar and chucked it halfheartedly at Scotty’s head, missing by an inch as the engineer flinched out of the way. “Hab SoSlI’ Quch. Oh look, I speak Klingon! Now bug off.”

Scotty looked ready to have some angry words with the man, but McCoy put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll leave him be,” he said quietly. “It’s not worth it.”

“The man is just asking for a dressin’ down,” Scotty grumbled. “That’s insubordination, throwing things at an officer. An’ I’m pretty sure he’s security, too.”

“Yeah, he is,” McCoy said. “But I’m pretty sure the man wouldn’t pass a cadet psych test in the state he’s in. He’s been through enough already.” A flash of red caught his eye further on, and he pointed. “I think she’ll be a better bet.”

The woman looked up at them from where she leaned against a condenser unit as they approached. She seemed friendlier already, McCoy thought hopefully, though ‘not throwing food at your head’ was a pretty low bar to clear. “Excuse me, miss,” he said as politely as he could. “You’re a member of security, aren’t you.”

She nodded smartly. “Lieutenant Adelante.” Up close, he realized that he’d actually seen her before, back when they’d been scanning people to let into the Engineering deck. She was one of the security officers who’d been helping him guard the door, the one he’d handed a phaser after its previous owner had  panicked. She’d seemed pretty level-headed throughout; if he had to trust anyone, Adelante seemed a good place to start.

“Scotty and I are going back into the saucer to pick up some important medical equipment, and we need backup. It’ll be dangerous.”

Her face slackened. “You’re going back in there?” she said softly. “Sir, that’s insane.”

McCoy gave a snort of laughter. “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know, kid. Listen: I think it’s nuts too, but if we get that equipment, we can make a vaccine. Tell me that isn’t the first good news you’ve heard in the last 24 hours.”

“It’s insane,” she repeated, “but I’ll do it.”

“Really?” Scotty asked, a little taken aback. “It is a madhouse out there, ye know.” McCoy shot him a pointed look of the ‘you’re not helping’ variety, but Adelante didn’t waver. “I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ve seen what it’s like out there, but I’ll do it. It’s my job to protect people, and it’s not like I can do that sitting on my ass in here for the next five days.”

A proud smile crept across McCoy’s face. “Good girl,” he said, clapping her on the shoulder.

She set her padd aside and stood. “When are we leaving, then?”

McCoy glanced at the time on the padd. “As soon as we can,” he said. “Scotty: grab whatever tools you need. Lieutenant: grab your phaser, have a bite to eat, hit the bathroom. We’ll be leaving in half an hour. Let’s go.”

They nodded resolutely and headed their separate ways. McCoy watched them go with a slow but persistent feeling of discomfort. He was asking a lot of her, of both of them. This really was an idiotically dangerous plan. He made a face. God, he was turning into Jim Kirk; coming up with stupid plans likely to get people killed, worrying incessantly about everyone under his command, trying to think on a grand scale about the good of the ship.

On the other hand, maybe it was like what they said about insanity: if you knew you were crazy, then you had some sanity left in you. Jim would be patting them on the back cheerfully, telling them that of course nothing would go wrong. McCoy knew that there was a good chance that things might go south, and there was no use tempting fate by trying to deny it.

But maybe things really would turn out all right.

He laughed. Yeah, right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kinda dialogue heavy, I know. Setup, though, for some fun to come! And by fun I mean chaos, of course. We're going into the belly of beast... Adelante should watch her back. Being the only minor character redshirt out of three? Never a good sign.
> 
> Next week: everything goes as planned and everyone is entirely okay, because we all know that's how these sorts of things always turn out, don't we?

**Author's Note:**

> Any feedback is appreciated! See a typo/inconsistency? Don't let it slide, tell me and I'll do my best to fix it.
> 
> And is this fic still active? Heck yes it is, I'm just slow. Subscribe so you won't miss the next chapter!


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